Erin Gloria Ryan

This morning, everyone lost their shit over Tara, the hero cat of Bakersfield who saved her owner's 4-year-old son from an unprovoked dog attack in one of the greatest cat videos of all time. Now, Tara finally speaks. Kind of.

Bakersfield's local ABC affiliate dispatched a crew to the boy's home this afternoon, where his parents spoke about the dog incident and how their 4-year-old rescue cat Tara swung into crazy protective mama cat action. Four-year-old Jeremy interjected with typical toddler non-sequiturs — "THAT'S A MEAN DOG!" "I GOT AN OWIE!"— while his father explained that it wasn't until after the incident that he realized that his security footage would help him piece together what happened. That raw footage is available on ABC23's website.

But far more interesting is Tara's turn in the spotlight, where the crew positions the cat on a chair next to the kid she helped rescue and the kid does gentle kid stuff to the cat like hold her leg and pet her on the head.

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Jumping between an attacking dog and a small child might be unorthodox cat behavior, but barely tolerating the affections of doting humans is not. Cat celebs: they're just like regular cats.